Bruce Wagner - I'll Let You Go

“So what are you saying?”

“I bet your grandfather would be able to meet John Paul. He could fly to the Vatican on his plane. If the pope was too busy or sick or whatever —then your grandfather could give the Vatican money or build an orphanage. Something to get his attention. Then John Paul would have to meet with him.”

“Meet with him? For what?”

“For Edward.”

Toulouse just looked at her.

“Edward was a martyr to the Apert — martyrs don’t even need miracles to get beatified. Then John Paul could put him on a fast track.”

“Amaryllis, are you kidding?”

“I told you not to laugh!”

“I’m not. But a saint …”

“Edward was a saint.”

“But you said you needed a miracle to be ‘canon—’ ”

“There is a miracle — it came to me when I was with my brother and sister at California Adventure. I think Edward was put here for a reason, and no one knew it but him. He was put here for Joyce so she would take care of those babies! The ones people throw in the trash. Otherwise, why would she have done that, Toulouse? Why would she have even started to do it? It was because of him , because of Edward , and I think he must have known all along. Remember how you said at the funeral she was crying because she never named him? That’s the proof! He had no name because he was pure. It’s like he was ‘of God’—how do you give God a name? And don’t make fun of me! And now Joyce names those poor little babies, Toulouse, that’s her life’s work! She made a potter’s field in a rich man’s graveyard. For a woman like that — and I don’t even know her that well, but I do know what you and Lucy and Edward always said about her — for a rich lady who doesn’t care about anyone and who just gets face-lifts, for a rich lady like that to bury those dumpster babies and give them names, to make that her life’s work, well, that is a miracle, isn’t it, Toulouse? Isn’t it? Isn’t that a miracle?”

Marcus met with Van Sant, and with a writer from Vanity Fair . But one had nothing to do with the other.

The meetings took place at the William Morris Agency on El Camino Drive. This time, he stared at the oil paintings of the founders to his heart’s content.

He was greeted warmly, if as a kind of charismatic curio, by the many to whom he was introduced. He was frankly startled that he ever had a passion for anything that went on in this cold brick building; though appreciative of Burnham’s intentions, he would soon put an end to the misguided efforts of his gemütlich old friend. Marcus found it amusing that the agent actually harbored the fantasy that he might wish to return, in whatever capacity, to the world of “talent”—as what? Mental-Health liaison? The Van Sant business he didn’t particularly mind; Gus was the real article, and he’d let that play itself out, to be sociable. He would say no to Vanity Fair; when he told Burnham—“ Say no to Vanity Fair”—the unintentioned hilarity of the command made them split a gut. But a line had been drawn in the sand and Burnham understood. Trinnie couldn’t have been happier; his behavior in the matter was the ultimate proof of sanity.

On Christmas morning, he arranged to meet Trinnie, Toulouse and his father-in-law at Saint-Cloud. It was a joyous surprise when he rolled up in a pristine aqua-blue Chevy convertible (a Bel-Air, fittingly), having passed his driver’s exam a mere three days before. Mr. Trotter declined, so he took his wife and son for a spin to the beach. They drove all the way to Palos Verdes, then around the peacock-infested peninsula to Portuguese Bend. They ate hamburgers and watched surfers.

Trinnie had her own surprise. At dusk, after dropping off the boy, they switched seats and she drove downhill to Carcassone Way. The cold wind snapped at their burnished cheeks, and they were happy. When they reached the driveway of La Colonne, she pushed the remote on her key chain and the gate swung open; the padlock days were no more.

“I had to do this,” she said as they walked the short distance to the tower. “I know I’m insane — but I had to.”

Entering the house, still lit by a stubbornly dying sun, Marcus slowly apperceived. It was filled with housewarming furniture and just-opened gifts, ribbons and wrappers torn off in a careless bacchanal. The kitchen was redolent of “leftovers,” painstakingly re-created only this morning by Saint-Cloud chefs from archival recipes, their exact placement on stove, pot and dishes culled from “crime-scene” sketches commissioned by La Colonne curators — the same white-truffle risotto cooked in the late hours of their wedding night after a first round of lovemaking. The sheer recovered memory of it all, the audaciously micromanaged authenticity … the touching, nearly macabre care his wife had poured into presentation and conceit — part spectacle, part performance-theater — sent Marcus’s heart to stifle his throat.

He went up to view her handiwork, with Trinnie nervously trailing after. Whenever he smiled or shook his head in wonderment, she did the same; and when the light that shone from his face darkened at some fleeting, unvoiced thought, she inadvertently mimicked his mood like the most sorrowful of mimes. Occasionally, he bent to the floor to retrieve an article of clothing or slip of paper — say, a receipt from ’87 with his signature — and muttered his astonishment, to which Trinnie would say with an anxious smile, “I know, I know — I’m insane , I told you …” Then he would calm her with a caress or a look of such kindness that she thought: now we can truly face anything .

More investigations: darting in and out of cupboard and closet, drawer, nook and cranny (most of the middle floors were empty, as Louis had only provisionally furnished “lobby” and topmost floor), and for a moment it seemed like the very air of that time was transported intact from some fabulous interdimensional holding zone, flying mites, motes and all. It took his breath away and reminded him of the daring, the scope and wild apprehension, of the girl he’d left behind: remarkable creature! Naturally, he’d have been drawn to her, and she to him with his cracked mind — that was her passion and folly — and now here they were strolling through the crackedness of both, room by room, floor by floor, until they reached the master suite. This time there sat the four-poster in the Moroccan style, the one they had made Toulouse in. He swore he could smell their young bodies there.

By now it was dark. He sat on the bed, and Trinnie lit candles as she had years ago. They took off their clothes, eager and ritualized. When he came in her, she was sure she had conceived again.

“Shall we stay over?” he said.

“It’s like that horror film, isn’t it?” she laughed. “ The House on Haunted Hill ? You know — if you can remain without being scared shitless you win the inheritance.”

They listened to the wind and soon he drifted to sleep. She stared at his rugged, beautiful face, and it was not hard to imagine that he had never gone away. Fourteen years … what was fourteen years in the scheme of things?

The jealous moon glared, all full of itself. “If he’s gone in the morning,” it seemed to say, “then you’ll belong to me forever.” Trinnie told the moon it had a deal.

Morning, with its inescapable light — and majestic indifference. Morning, unbecoming — neither birth nor death nor even Time itself can woo it. Morning: that outruns the lightest of heart, and makes undone the rest.

She heard Marcus brushing his teeth. She was glad she hadn’t reconnected the phones; she shivered with the memory of her father’s calls — then Dodd’s — then her father’s — then Samson’s — and her father’s and Dodd’s again and Bluey’s and Samson’s and her father’s again and again and again until she could pick up no more. Bluey and Winter had finally come and spirited her to Saint-Cloud.